2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR (May) – The Pre-Cannestravaganza
Well, the time has come. Let’s start predicting.
With five Palme d’Or wins under its belt and two Best Picture wins since 2019, all eyes are on NEON at Cannes this month. Starting with Parasite‘s history-making Best Picture win to the most recent with last season’s Anora, the festival and the boutique studio have cemented a place in an Oscar era that’s truly untouched. Two of the other Palme winners, 2022’s Triangle of Sadness and 2023’s Anatomy of a Fall, both earned Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay nominations with Anatomy winning its screenplay award. Only 2021’s Titane, from Julia Ducournau (more on her in a bit), didn’t end up being an Oscar player (it was submitted as France’s International Feature Film submission but even failed to make the cut there). But how long before that streak comes to an end?
This year, among two-time Best Picture-winning studio has Sentimental Value from Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World) making its Cannes debut in the coming weeks and all eyes are on Trier and his star Worst Person star Renate Reinsve to make a pretty big breakthrough. A win at Cannes, especially another Palme, would put the film in the top tier of early predictions and coming in early, ahead of the festival, that’s what my gut is telling me. I see Trier (and the film) as a part of the clear trend over the last decade for a non-English language director building a resumé that clicks with the Academy: Bong Joon-ho, of course, but also Thomas Vinterberg, Yorgos Lanthimos, Jacques Audiard, Coralie Fargeat, Ruben Östlund, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, far too many to count now. That could all change on May 24 when the winners are announced but it feels right. NEON also has Ducournau’s Alpha in competition. Could she nab two wins in less than five years? Pretty unlikely (although men don’t have that difficulty here) but a lot of attention will be paid to the film, and expectation as well. I think there’s a real place where Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love gets a major pick up (Netflix makes so much sense, they’re going to get things from Cannes) and goes all the way.
Let’s shift gears and take a look at box office since the Oscars’ expanded Best Picture era, because it tells us a story about original films. Since 2009 there have been five films that have crossed $200m domestically. Three of them, Avatar (2009), Inception (2011) and Gravity (2013), all came from a previous Oscar winner (James Cameron) or previous Oscar nominee (Christopher Nolan and Alfonso Cuarón, respectively). The other two were 2009’s The Hangover (a box office smash, Golden Globe winner and BAFTA nominee) and 2012’s Ted, also a box office hit earned an original song Oscar nomination for its director/writer/voice star Seth MacFarlane, who also hosted the Academy Awards the year he was nominated. But ultimately, even in the ever-expanding world of the Oscars, neither of these were coming close to Best Picture nominations. That is to say, what makes an AMPAS-friendly film or even “Oscar bait” has changed dramatically in the last decade. Full on comedies haven’t felt the embrace that genre films have though, and that brings us to Sinners.
With a second box office weekend that nearly matched the huge opening of the first, Ryan Coogler’s latest film is putting him into an elite group of filmmakers able to achieve success in both IP-driven films and sequels and his own original work. Already a double Oscar nominee himself (for the original song “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Best Picture as a producer on Judas and the Black Messiah), he has all the makings that set the directors above on an Oscar path. He negotiated a deal with Warner Bros that returns all rights to him in 25 years, whatever the future of cinema and its consumption is in another quarter century. And, he has Tom Cruise on his side! (Wait, is that a plus or a minus?)
What’s more, Sinners 6% drop from its opening weekend to next ($48m to $45m) is the smallest second-weekend decline for any film opening north of $40 million since 2009’s Avatar and the smallest ever for an R-rated horror movie (that A CinemaScore is really coming into play). Plans for the film to return to IMAX screens later this month (it’s losing them to Thunderbolts* tomorrow) for a week will keep those numbers up. It’s one of the more impressive box office stories in a minute, but can it sustain that narrative with the summer sun peering in on the horizon?
The shortlist of Black directors who have been nominated for Best Director is just that, short: John Singleton (1992’s Boyz in the Hood), Lee Daniels (2009’s Precious), Steve McQueen (2013’s 12 Years a Slave), Barry Jenkins (2016’s Moonlight), Jordan Peele (2017’s Get Out) and Spike Lee (2018’s BlacKkKlansman). Just six out of nearly 500 nominees in 97 years of the Academy Awards. As mentioned above, Coogler’s bonafides are there, a path as strong, or stronger, as anyone who came before him. Potentially being the first Black winner ever is a strong narrative, although outside of Peele (a fascinatingly similar comparison), the previous Black nominees here have all been non-genre dramas. Yet, two of them – 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight – won Best Picture without their directors winning.
Now, I’ve seen some high predictions for Sinners, so high in fact that some even have at #1 with people convinced that it’s a Best Picture winner getting 10 nominations across technicals and acting and competitive to win there too. I get it. It’s early in the year, before Cannes, and the movie is an undeniable critical and box office smash. It’s all we have and the desire to write in pen and have that early call is as tempting as an Irish band at your doorstep. Sometimes it’s the devil you know. But something isn’t adding up. This isn’t an issue of deserving or of opinion, I just feel it, instinctively, that despite the Academy’s (slow) growth to nominating and rewarding horror, sci-fi and otherwise genre material has increased, at the end of the day, it’s a vampire movie. While the first half of the film is a gorgeous post-diaspora at a rich and sustainable Black culture in the 1930s South, once the vampire element is truly introduced and the film exposes its neck to it full flesh, it will be hard for some voters to see it as much other than that. But, if any film is going to break the vampire curse in a big way at the Oscars, it’s Sinners.
With Sundance and Berlin as the early festivals every year that offer juried and/or audience awards that can sometimes pay off come Oscar time, last year we saw A Real Pain become an Oscar winner, with A Different Man and Porcelain War earning nominations. This year, there’s some real potential for 2025 Sundance winners like Twinless (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) and Sorry, Baby (A24) but I’m also keeping an eye out for docs and international features that could make the long trek this season, like Seeds, Mr. Nobody Against Putin and DJ Ahmet. For Berlin, the acting wins for Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) and Andrew Scott (Blue Moon) hold promise.
Speaking of festival winners, what to do about The Life of Chuck. The Mike Flanagan film won the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award, traditionally one of our very best awards bellwethers going into Oscar season. But that win was last year and NEON, which has hotter tickets on its docket this season, is plunking down the theatrical release for it on June 6 (limited) and wider on June 13, in hopes for a box office hit. You’d have to go all the way back to 2011 to find a TIFF winner miss out on a Best Picture nomination but they were all also released in the calendar year of their win while it was still fresh. Plus, the second and third placers for the award last September, Emilia Pérez and Anora, both ended up being multiple Oscar winners with the latter not only taking Best Picture but being a NEON title. That doesn’t, to me, bode well for Chuck, and puts it pretty low on the list of potential nominees.
While we’re talking about festival wins, let’s revisit the ones we do have from this year, the complete list of Sundance and Berlin winners.
Sundance Film Festival
US Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic
Atropia
Directing Award: US Dramatic
Rashad Frett, Ricky
US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting
Dylan O’Brien, Twinless
US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast
Plainclothes – Tom Blyth, Russell Tovey, Maria Dizzia, Christian Cooke, Gabe Fazio, Amy Forsyth
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: US Dramatic
Eva Victor, Sorry, Baby
Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic
Twinless
Audience Award: U.S. Documentary
André is an Idiot
Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic
DJ Ahmet
U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary
Seeds, Brittany Shyne
Directing Award: U.S. Documentary
Geeta Gandbhir, The Perfect Neighbor
Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: U.S. Documentary
Parker Laramie, André is an Idiot
World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic
Sabar Bonda, Cactus Pears
World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Writing
Two Women, Chloé Robichaud and Catherine Léger
World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision
Georgi M. Unkovski, DJ Ahmet
World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary
Cutting Through Rocks
World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression
Coexistence, My Ass!
Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary
Mstyslav Chernov, 2000 Meters to Andriivka
Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary
Prime Minister
Berlin Film Festival
Golden Bear for Best Film: Drømmer (Dreams (Sex Love)) by Dag Johan Haugerud, Produced by Yngve Sæther, Hege Hauff Hvattum
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize: O último azul (The Blue Trail) by Gabriel Mascaro
Silver Bear Jury Prize: El mensaje (The Message) by Iván Fund
Silver Bear for Best Director: Huo Meng for Sheng xi zhi di for Living the Land
Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance: Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance: Andrew Scott for Blue Moon
Silver Bear for Best Screenplay: Radu Jude for Kontinental ’25
Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution: The creative ensemble of La Tour de Glace (The Ice Tower) by Lucile Hadžihalilović
Until post-Cannes, here are my 2026 Oscar nomination predictions in Best Picture and Best Director for May.
BEST PICTURE
| 1. Sentimental Value (NEON) |
| 2. Bugonia (Focus Features) |
| 3. One Battle After Another (Warner Bros) |
| 4. Jay Kelly (Netflix) |
| 5. Marty Supreme (A24) |
| 6. After the Hunt (Amazon MGM) |
| 7. Wicked For Good (Universal Pictures) |
| 8. Die, My Love (TBD) |
| 9. Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century) |
| 10. Sinners (Warner Bros) |
Next up: Avatar: Fire and Ash (20th Century), The Ballad of the Small Player (Netflix), A Bold, Beautiful Journey (Sony Pictures), Frankenstein (Netflix), Hamnet (Focus Features), Is This Thing On? (Searchlight Pictures), The Lost Bus (Apple), The Phoenician Scheme (Focus Features), Pressure (Focus Features), A Simple Accident (TBD), Sound of Falling (TBA), Untitled Kathryn Bigelow (Netflix)
Other contenders: Anemone (Focus Features), Ann Lee (TBD), Blue Moon (Sony Pictures Classics), Eleanor the Great (Sony Pictures Classics), Ella McCay (20th Century Studios), Father, Mother, Sister, Brother (MUBI), F1 (Apple/Warner Bros), Highest 2 Lowest (Apple/A24), The History of Sound (MUBI), If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (A24), Klara and the Sun (Sony Pictures), The Life of Chuck (NEON), The Mastermind (MUBI), Michael Part 1 (Lionsgate), Rental Family (Searchlight Pictures), The Rivals of Amziah King (TBD), The Smashing Machine (A24), Train Dreams (Netflix), Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix)
BEST DIRECTOR
| 1. Joachim Trier – Sentimental Value (NEON) |
| 2. Yorgos Lanthimos – Bugonia (Focus Features) |
| 3. One Battle After Another – Paul Thomas Anderson (Warner Bros) |
| 4. Marty Supreme – Josh Safdie (A24) |
| 5. Jay Kelly – Noah Baumbach (Netflix) |
| 6. After the Hunt – Luca Guadagino (Amazon MGM) |
| 7. Lynne Ramsay – Die, My Love (TBD) |
| 8. Sinners – Ryan Coogler (Warner Bros) |
| 9. Scott Cooper – Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century) |
| 10. Jafar Panahi – A Simple Accident (TBD) |
Next up: Edward Berger – The Ballad of the Small Player (Netflix), Kogonada – A Bold, Beautiful Journey (Sony Pictures), Guillermo del Toro – Frankenstein (Netflix), Chloé Zhao – Hamnet (Focus Features), Bradley Cooper – Is This Thing On? (Searchlight Pictures), Paul Greengrass – The Lost Bus (Apple), Anthony Maras – Pressure (Focus Features), Mascha Schilinski – Sound of Falling (TBA), Kathryn Bigelow – Untitled Kathryn Bigelow (Netflix), Jon M. Chu – Wicked For Good (Universal Pictures)
Other contenders: Ronan Day-Lewis – Anemone (Focus Features), Richard Linklater – Blue Moon (Sony Pictures Classics), James L. Brooks – Ella McCay (20th Century Studios), Joseph Kosinski – F1 (Apple/Warner Bros), Oliver Hermanus – The History of Sound (MUBI), Taika Waititi – Klara and the Sun (Sony Pictures), Mike Flanagan – The Life of Chuck (NEON), Richard Linklater – Nouvelle Vague (TBD), Wes Anderson – The Phoenician Scheme (Focus Features), Hikari – Rental Family (Searchlight Pictures), Benny Safdie – The Smashing Machine (A24)
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
- ‘Death Becomes Her,’ Jinkx Monsoon Lead LGBTQ Critics’ Dorian Theater Award Nominations - May 13, 2025
- Interview: With ‘Overcompensating,’ Benito Skinner Brings the Benny Drama, and Comedy, to His College Coming Out [VIDEO] - May 13, 2025
- 2025 BAFTA TV Awards: ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office,’ Marisa Abela, Jessica Gunning Share Top Wins - May 11, 2025
‘Love Letters’ Review: A Quietly Powerful Portrait of Queer Motherhood [B] Cannes 
‘A Useful Ghost’ Review: Vacuum Cleaner Love Story Doesn’t Suck [C+] Cannes 
‘Sirât’ Review: Óliver Laxe Takes Us on a Sisyphean Journey of Sound and Fury Road [A-] Cannes 
Director Watch Podcast Ep. 99 – ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’ (Peter Jackson, 2001)